Browse Items (73 total)

Scandinavians settled across the Prairies. The Vasa Order, named after the first king of modern Sweden, formed in the late 1890s in Connecticut with the goal of preserving Swedish culture; eventually the organization expanded its scope to include…

Canada practiced rationing from 1942 to 1947. It began with sugar, but soon extended to beer, wine, and spirits, tea and coffee, butter, and meat. Rationing in Canada was relatively mild compared to England, where the policy lasted from 1940 to 1954.…

Rita Martin was invented in 1938 as a corporate character for Robin Hood flour, which by the time of this book’s publication was milled in Calgary, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, and Humberstone, Ontario. With a name equally pronounceable in English and…

The aptly named Dianne Watt, Director of the Home Service Department of Canadian Utilities Limited, had a useful mascot in “Reddy,” the helpful bulb-nosed electricity representative who also graced Calgary Power’s advertising (see,…

Home Canning and Freezing followed multiple editions of Home Canning, distributed by Canadian Western Gas Company (Calgary) and Northwestern Utilities (Edmonton) in the 1930s and 40s. Although this book is not dated, the “freezing”…

Jesse Beaufort Hurlbert was born in Canada to Loyalist parents. He became Professor of Natural Science at Victoria College in Toronto in 1841 (Neill 82). The long title of this book is Physical Atlas with Coloured Maps Showing the Geographical…

Jean Brodie was a popular Toronto-based food writer in the 1930s, responsible for 100 Tested Recipes, produced for the Farmer’s Dairy in Toronto. She also edited a food column for the Toronto Star: as one early ad put it, “To further its…

Laura Lindsay (1914–88) was a popular Edmonton television personality. Her homemaker’s show aired live five days a week on the Sunwapta Broadcasting Corporation’s CFRN (now CTV). Her real name was in fact Laura Banks, and her son Tommy Banks…

Elizabeth Driver has argued, with respect to francophone cookbooks, that “Before the Quiet Revolution in Quebec in the 1960s, the influence of the Catholic Church permeated French society and entrenched the traditional subservience of women.…

Many Chinese immigrants came to Canada to work on the railway, but after these jobs ended, they were prohibited from entering or training for many professions. Many turned to restaurants to make a living. The earliest Chinese restaurant menus…